Australian bank Westpac has admitted that its consumer and business online banking service has been hit by several technical glitches as businesses in the country rushed to submit business activity statements (BAS).
Westpac spokesman Paul Jennings told reporters from the Sydney Morning Herald that Web banking services had been affected by high traffic as businesses rushed to lodge business activity statements in time for the 28 July deadline.
According to press reports, users have complained that the site repeatedly timed out, although some customers claimed the glitches were nothing new and occured everytime the BAS deadline approached.
Furthermore, customers have also complained that the bank has repeatedly failed to address issues with certain banking functions - such as the 'pay anyone' feature - which cannot always be accessed when using browsers such as Firefox.
Jennings told reporters that the bank puts a limit on user access to keep the site stable during 'heavy traffic days' but he insists support teams are working to rectify these issues.
He says the bank is progressively making the Web site compliant with W3C standards and this will rectify the Firefox Pay Anyone issue.
In January this year Westpac was forced to shut down its Web banking service after a security upgrade left some customers unable to access their accounts, while in August last year Westpac had to apologise to its Internet banking customers after a batch of funds transfer transactions were duplicated due to "human error" during overnight processing.